GRID LEGENDS

[breyzipp]

Waited until midnight to give it a go but I‘m super tired so will go to sleep soon. But not before some impressions!

• I’m playing on Xbox series X with a controller.
• only raced story mode until chapter 6, that includes a handful of races and cutscenes (the same stuff as what the YouTubers have been showing)
• kept all settings right out of the box, except I turned subtitles on
• the handling is different from GRID 2019 that’s for sure! It feels more… subtle I think is the best description. It feels like there is more to it now than in GRID 2019 so I end up driving a bit more carefully. I’m not to the point yet of doing those brutal powerslides from GRID 2019… yet!
• Graphics are a clear step up from GRID 2019, higher resolution and more detail. I especially like the extra lights in the buildings next to the tracks.
• credits progression (from story mode at least) feels slow, I believe I’m at 26K or so after those 6 races (medium difficulty, 1st place in all of them). But that’s perfectly fine for me! Especially since you now also get cars rewarded and don’t need to buy the whole bunch like in GRID 2019.
• one thing (and that’s also the only thing so far) I absolutely hate is the racing music. My god it’s bad. I turned it off but now that I remember I had if off in GRID 2019 as well, it’s probably equally bad over there.
• sound FX is somethinh I can’t comment on yet, it was excellent in GRID 2019 but that racing music hindered me in really hearing the sound from the cars and track. I’ve turned the music off for now, will get better sound impressions tomorrow.
• what I also don’t like is that the game immediately throws you into career mode with a very confusing choice between continuing story mode (after the intro cutscene and race at Strada alpina), or start a new story mode. Seriously, would be better if you start the game first time that you just get thrown in the main menu. After the player clicks through the tutorials let them click on story if they choose to do so.

Other than those last 2 bullet points, a very positive first impression. And that’s just from story mode. The game so far feels like I expected it to be: a step up in about all aspects compared to GRID 2019.

 

[DozUk]

Having so much fun playing the game, everything grid 2019 should have been. It's a blast, have gt7 on pre order but room for both. As a ps5 owner, loving that I can jump into an Xbox owners career race and try to stop them from winning 😁 now that's a slice of satisfaction that gt7 can't provide.

Handling great, with 2019 it was twitchy and frustrating. With this, if you make a mistake it's down to you and it's easy to own that mistake.

Only thing slightly disappointing is the weekly/monthly events. You run the but have to go the web to see where you stand. The in game event just says your first and I don't even think it holds your pb in the event but I could bee wrong with that.

Haven't seen any deluxe only events yet but I suppose it's early for that but would have been nice to provide content for those supporting that version.

On the whole, it plays great and appears to have good depth.

I see people raving about the race creator and what a game changer it is. I may be missing something here but isn't it just the same as a lobby set up in any other game, just selecting from what's on offer? Can't see a difference from going into project cars 2 lobby and saying this class or car, this track, this time of day, snow/rain etc

I'm hoping I am missing something and it's really cool.

Anyway, really enjoying the racing

 

[Nacho Libre]

So, I bought it at the eleventh hour, that's what a good, generous demo will do. (It's not like I was going to spend on Cyberpunk or Elden Ring anyways...)

 

[doblocruiser]

Done a quick race just before going to work and only useful thing I can say for now is that it sounds great and looks splendid on a base PS4!

 

[breyzipp]

Having so much fun playing the game, everything grid 2019 should have been. It's a blast, have gt7 on pre order but room for both. As a ps5 owner, loving that I can jump into an Xbox owners career race and try to stop them from winning 😁 now that's a slice of satisfaction that gt7 can't provide.

LMAO! 🤣 Didn’t even know that was possible. I’m playing story mode for now and I think I will complete it fully before doing career, I avoided all spoilers for the story so I’m curious to see how it turns out.

I see people raving about the race creator and what a game changer it is. I may be missing something here but isn't it just the same as a lobby set up in any other game, just selecting from what's on offer? Can't see a difference from going into project cars 2 lobby and saying this class or car, this track, this time of day, snow/rain etc

I'm hoping I am missing something and it's really cool.

Yeah that’s what I was saying as well when I first saw a glimpse of it, they call it a race creator but it’s just a glorified custom race (for singleplayer) or indeed lobby settings for multiplayer. But I really like the UI in this game, especially for the race creator. In GRID 2019 this was just some text selection fields, I absolutelu love how visual and graphic the race creator is. The 4 slots seems a bit limited so I hope that can be expanded in the future.

Just started playing again after some sleep, will put my experience and first thoughts in a notepad and drop it here later today in the forum. Took the day off from work today for this game so I’ll be playing it a lot.

But yeah, this is way better than GRID 2019 so far and indeed like you said everything GRID 2019 should have been. Again, it does to GRID 2019 what FM6 did to FM5. When the successor game launches you just realise how lacking the predecessor really was. Having that said, I did get my enjoyment out of GRID 2019 as well so I don’t regret buying it in 2019.

 

[Scaff]

My day one thoughts

 

[MOPARbarrett5]

Here's my review of the trial
Not much terrible or groundbreaking, but there are improvements over 2019 and features reminiscent of other simcade games, though not too confident of an identity.

 

[UKMikey]

Played a couple of chapters on XSX. I haven't set up an EA account yet. Hard difficulty level is way too easy so far, may have to bump it up to Expert. The replays appear to be broken for me, hope a patch will sort this out.

 

[DozUk]

Expert is no harder, I would try the hardest and make damage count as you may then make more effort to keep car from dropping off.

Weekly, monthly challenges need work. No internal leaderboads but not holding your best or it's ghost when returning for another attempt isn't acceptable. Poor implementation of challenges, hope they rectify this.

Handling and races are great though, just iron out these niggles and they have a winner

 

[Barra333]

My day one thoughts

Sounds like something I'd pick up right away, except for the release of some other game next Friday. I'll grab it when it goes on sale, as I wouldn't be touching it for a couple of months anyway.

 

[breyzipp]

New official video out :



I noticed they mentioned London and Strada Alpina as tracks, then also Yokohama (which is not new, it’s returning from GRID Autosport). They didn’t even mention the 3rd new track and due to what’s going on in the world I honestly think that’s the best choice, big kudos to Codemasters for this. Even though I have no problem at all racing on that track in game, I think it’s the best to not mention it at the moment.

Peace!

 

[Nacho Libre]

If you drop in someones' race and remain in the lobby to keep competing, remember that you can tune your car (!), and while the adjustments are rather basic, just tweaking the gearbox/suspension a bit does yield results.

All the reviews that I have watched/read so far have been positive!

 

[PJTierney]

@breyzipp I hope you appreciated my sendy drifting skills in that video

The BRZ is a great car to throw about, especially when you add more power.

 

[UKMikey]

Playing story mode and that Manzi bloke starts to get well mardy on the Sydney track. Keeps trying to ram me. I swear I only hit him a couple of times.

I like to drive with the music on, makes me feel like a secret agent.

 

[toastet]

So it seems Legends is a bit beefed up Grid 2019 with more tracks and more cars and a story mode. But gameplay wise and handling wise there aren't very noticable changes to the last one?

 

[breyzipp]

Some more thoughts after playing some more story mode. And feedback for @PJTierney
For the record: I haven’t touched multiplayer or career yet.

The Good:

• Stadium trucks feel really great, love the races with the jumps! (and I’m normally not a fan of stadium trucks ☺️)
• Love the extra audio queues from the crowd cheering next to the track.
• Power sliding through corners is still a thing and super fun! (Ford GT in Chicago for example)
• I like how for multi class the slower cars get a head start and you race all together (instead of starting together and having separate scoreboards). It’s maybe not the most realistic way, but it’s the way that fits the game the best IMO.
• I love having 3 internal camera views, I think this is the first game to have a windscreen, dashboard and driver seat camera. Now add the helmet camera from Project CARS as well and you have the best camera system ever in a racing game.
• Great improved graphics overal. Some moments that come to mind are Okutama sprint compared to the previous game looks greatly enhanced. Amother moment that comes to mind is the races at night in cities, when the buildings next to the road are lit up.
• I’ve had some more time with various cars now, the handling is really great and a good step up from GRID 2019.
• Edit - forgot to mention 1 more thing: the frame rate on XSX feels as smooth as butter 👍☺️

The Bad:

• medium difficulty (default selection) is way too easy (for story at least). Difficulty should be scaled/adjusted a bit better. Maybe rename easy to very easy and the current medium to easy?
• Not seeing what car you are dropped in during story mode apart from the end of race screens is really annoying. Please improve the pre-race start screens to add some additional info for this. I’m playing with hood camera and having to cycle through the cameras in the middle of a race just to figure out which car I’m driving is a bit silly.
• Sound effect of driving on wet track is a bit disappointing and feels off when you use an exterior camera (in my case the hood cam)
• There was some very weird shadow popping effect on Okutana sprint and some distant objects popping, I made a video about that but it seems the video is all green and corrupt. Is it even possible to record a video clip of the game by pressing and holding the Xbox share button?

The Very Ugly :

My biggest gripe BY FAR is the absolutely horrible sound mix. Something is seriously off here. My Xbox Series X is connected to a 5.1 surround sound system. Since the only audio options to choose from is headphones or speakers, I went with speakers (maybe add home theatre option here as well as that’s what I normally select when available in games). My sound issues are as follows:

• The sounds themselves are fine, it’s the sound mix that’s horrible. For starters the master volume output is way too low, normally I game with the amplifier from my 5.1 system around 42-45, some games around 50. For GRID Legends when it’s at 60 the game is still too silent. And if I leave it at 60, each time I unlock an achievement (which is often in career) I almost get a heart attack from the jump scare that is the super loud XBox achievement unlock, sjees. Please fix the master sound output volume, it was fine in GRID 2019.
• When I put the individual sound sliders at the same max setting, the spoken voice of the actors during story mode is way too silent compared to the other sounds. Again, the sound mix is just bad and should be fixed.
• I play with subtitles on, many times during story mode races, I see subtitles from Claire and Inel appear during a race, but I hear no spoken voice at all. It seems like many dialogue during a story race simply isn’t working.
• Spoken dialogue pre & post race is often out of sync with the subtitles, the subtitles run at a slower speed sometimes. Add to that the fact that the sound from unlocking all the new banners and other stuff seems to suppress the spoken dialogue even more (it was already silent) and this entire thing feels like a complete mess.
• No separate sliders for music during race and music outside the race is annoying (post race and menu music). I think GRID 2019 had this? I prefer to have the pre/post race music, the menu music, but not during the race. That’s not possible now.

The game itself is absolutely great, I’m having a lot of fun playing. But all these sound shenanigans feel very unpolished and prevent me from enjoying the story as much as I should be. I’m missing about all the dialogue except for the ones during video playback which is quite annoying. I hope the devs can look into this with high priority.

 

[Nacho Libre]

There are two features that are greyed out: 120 Hz video mode and spatial sound (I have Dolby Atmos, but even the stock Windows Sonic handles spatial sound). Hopefully, they will be activated soon. In their Twitter feed, they mentioned that a photo mode is coming!

 

[PJTierney]

There are two features that are greyed out: 120 Hz video mode and spatial sound (I have Dolby Atmos, but even the stock Windows Sonic handles spatial sound). Hopefully, they will be activated soon. In their Twitter feed, they mentioned that a photo mode is coming!

Photo Mode is coming.

For 120hz, try changing it at the console level instead of in-game as I've seen that work for people.

 

[DozUk]

So it seems Legends is a bit beefed up Grid 2019 with more tracks and more cars and a story mode. But gameplay wise and handling wise there aren't very noticable changes to the last one?

No, handling is massively changed, it's the best part of the game. The core that brings all around it together.

The races themselves are so good and fun and all because the handling is spot on, huge improvement from 2019 where the handling let the game down.

This game has had a huge reception despite being a week from gt7 and that because it's genuinely a joy to race

 

[ron24]

Photo Mode is coming.

For 120hz, try changing it at the console level instead of in-game as I've seen that work for people.

That did on work for me on the Ps5. I enabled 120hz on the Ps5 and put the game mode on the Ps5 to performance. I played the 10 hour trial o my series x and 120 worked fine.

 

[Nacho Libre]

As suggested by @PJTierney I switched to 120 Hz in my Series S (1080p) and went to race one of the story's events (a multiclass race, in the rain, at night). According to the monitor's framerate counter (and my eyeballs), never did the framerate stutter, nor there was any slowdown or screen tear of any kind... WHAT IS THIS SORCERY????

 

[PJTierney]

As suggested by @PJTierney I switched to 120 Hz in my Series S (1080p) and went to race one of the story's events (a multiclass race, in the rain, at night). According to the monitor's framerate counter (and my eyeballs), never did the framerate stutter, nor there was any slowdown or screen tear of any kind... WHAT IS THIS SORCERY????

The game’s minimum hardware spec is relatively low (because it doesn’t do any fancy ray tracing stuff and so-on) so with the right settings beefy hardware can tear through it.

I don’t have the screens capable of 120 so I play in 4k60 on Series X and it barely skips a beat.

 

[Nacho Libre]

Yes, but the series S is basically a cereal box with a fan!

 

[breyzipp]

This game has had a huge reception despite being a week from gt7 and that because it's genuinely a joy to race

I dare to say this game is on par with Dirt Rally 2.0 in terms of fun and quality. It’s a stellar racing game from Codemasters after the rather disappointing Dirt 5. I was planning to play some Horizon Zero Dawn again this evening (which got me seriously hooked again) but both GRID Legends and Ukraine news updates prevented me from doing so.

Anyway @PJTierney i finished the story now and I found a couple more bugs and suggestions. Can you forward them to the team? It’s all from playing Story mode on Series X.

• There seems to be no penalty for cutting corners in elimination mode?
• It would be nice if there was a leaderboard shown during and behind the race. I mean with all this emphasis on driver AI that is supposed to have a personality, it would be nice to be able to check their ranks. Or does EA have a vendetta against scoreboards lately? (hint hint Battlefield 2042 😄)
• my game crashed once when I went to the garage and wanted to browse the liveries
• I completed story now, redid one race so that I golded them all, but for some unknown reason the story button in my main menu has this yellow exclamation mark circle on it, hinting that there should be something I haven’t seen yet. A bug I suppose?
• I took a few clips and screenshots while playing of suggestions or bugs but I’ll go through those tomorrow

Also some things I liked which are worth mentioning and I didn’t mention in my previous posts:

• I like how when you look behind you, part of the rear interior / exterior (depending on your camera choice) is visible. GT Sport does the same, Forza devs are lazy in that department and just show nothing from the car.
• Straight line braking is so much better and stable than in GRID 2019. And heavy braking in a corner still results in a spin out depending on the car and the surface condition (rightfully so).
• I spun out on a wet curb in a corner when pushing the throttle a bit too hard to fast (I guess). Great stuff!

 

[UKMikey]

Anyway @PJTierney i finished the story now and I found a couple more bugs and suggestions. Can you forward them to the team? It’s all from playing Story mode on Series X

Do your replays work? Mine just plonk me in the middle of a race with all the AI frozen and no option to change camera?

 

[DozUk]

Does anyone know what the purple icons next to an ai 'racer means? I know the red ones mean they're a nemesis but sometimes an ai has both purple and red so perplexed as to what this is. I don't think the game tells you this

 

[UKMikey]

Does anyone know what the purple icons next to an ai 'racer means? I know the red ones mean they're a nemesis but sometimes an ai has both purple and red so perplexed as to what this is. I don't think the game tells you this

Doesn't it mean that driver is a story rival as well as a race nemesis?

 

[Nacho Libre]

I'm happy to report that performance on the One X has markedly improve and is now a mostly stable 60 fps experience, with just a few dips here and there.

 

[T0MMY3688]

I should have pre-ordered the game with all the bonus few days ago, still playing the trial and I really enjoy it. It doesn't look like a huge improvement from 2019 initially but it sure feels and plays a lot better. I almost finish up my 10 hours trial and I think I've only played 2.5 hours of Grid 2019 when it came to game pass.

EV races is quite good with the boost gate feature, drift handling felt pretty good and faster cars like the Formula X, Evija and GT3s is fun to drive and challenging to race with the hardest difficulty AI. Drop in PvP is also fun and convienient, less waiting for race to start is great.

The only thing I don't like is the weak controller vibrations, even have the vibration up to the maximum it just feels weak. Career mode is okay from what I've tried, is just a list of events.

It is also nice to see random mechanical damage that AIs encounter, wheels falling off and engine blown mid race:


Will buy a copy when the pre order bonus DLC is released and photo mode is added in.

 

[DozUk]

Doesn't it mean that driver is a story rival as well as a race nemesis?

I don't think so as all ai drivers are story drivers. On a list of say 21 ai drivers some have a purple icon. Only around 4 drivers, some just purple and some can be purple and red. I originally thought these were the opposite of red, ie they like you until I saw that some had both icons.

The game doesn't explain this at all.

@PJTierney is the game going to get at least a record lap holder and your own PB for Weekly/monthly challenges? We need this in game at the least.

Dirt rally 2 did these type of challenges really well, they're useless and severely lacking without holding at the very least your own personal best and the current record lap.

I fear this part of Grid Legends will soon get forgotten about without some love and care here. Every time I go back into it for another blast at it, it presents nothing, no target, no personal best and no ghost. I'm not motivated to do these without any sense of challenge.

Love the racing but the challenges are worthless and shoddy without these core elements that make it worthwhile

It seems a rushed implementation of this aspect which I really hope it gets some post launch attention to make it a part of the game that people will utilise going forward.